A Pakistani teenage boy who died last week while trying to stop a suicide bomber from targeting his school in the country's violence-prone northwest will have his school and a stadium named after him, officials said on Monday.
After stopping the bomber before he was able to enter the boy's school last week, 15-year-old Aitzaz Hassan, from the mainly Shiite Ibrahimzai village in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, become a national hero, the Agence France-Presse reported.
Though no one else was wounded or killed in the incident, the teenage schoolboy died in a hospital after the bomber blew himself up some 150 meters (490 feet) from the main gate of the school of 1,000 students.
According to AFP, when the attacker approached the building, Hasan was late for school and was standing outside.
"We have decided to name Aitzaz Hassan's school after him," Amjad Afridi, a senior adviser to the provincial government, told AFP. "We will also construct a sports stadium in Hangu and will name it after Hassan."
The provincial government would also donate $47,000 to the bereaved parents, Afridi said. Along with other senior officials, Afridi went to pay his personal respects to the family of Hassan, AFP reported. The award comes after the office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last week said it would seek "to approve the conferment of a top national bravery award Sitara-e-Shujjat (star of bravery)" on the teen.
An outpouring of tributes from across Pakistan have been coming in for Hassan's act of bravery, which prevented the bomber from striking the morning school assembly and killing hundreds of his classmates, according to AFP.
Newspapers, TV channels and blogs have demanded that he be commemorated.
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who survived multiple gunshots to the head by the Taliban for championing girls' right to education, also paid tribute to the teenager last week, describing him as "brave and courageous."
